Charlie Munger on worldly wisdom & a good life
Munger's recipe for a good life is mostly old and trite: try to deserve what you want, admire and work under the right people, pursue what genuinely interests you, earn your opinions, and don't overspend your income. When life hits hard, he says, face reality as it is, treat each blow as a chance to behave well, and soldier through. The highest form of civilization, in his view, is a seamless web of deserved trust.
16 points · 5 appearances · 2007–2023
How the view evolved
Every mischance is an opportunity to behave well → Soldier through: cry if you must, but don't quit
In 2007 at USC he takes Epictetus's view that every mischance is a chance to behave well and learn something. By the 2023 CNBC interview it is plainer endurance — 'soldiering through', even if you walk the streets crying for hours, because it is your only option.
Never overspend your income; even Mozart couldn't → Simple, trite rules make life better
In 2007 overspending is analysed as self-serving bias, with Mozart as the cautionary case. By 2019 it is one item in a compressed list of 'trite' rules — no resentment, don't overspend, stay cheerful, deal with reliable people, do what you're supposed to — that he says work so well.
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1995–2023 · changed view
“But of course, when people use the word common sense, what they mean is uncommon sense, because the standard human condition is ignorance and stupidity. They say old Joe has common sense, they mean as he has uncommon sense, I guess.”
1995–2020 · changed view
“Cicero is famous for saying a man who doesn't know what happened before he's born goes through life like a child. ... If you generalize Cicero, as I think one should, all these other things that you should know in addition to history — and those other things are the big ideas in all the other disciplines. And it doesn't help you just to know them enough so you could prattle them back on an exam and get an A. You have to learn these things in such a way that they're in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life.”
2008–2023 · changed view
“If you get right down to it, what I am is a lover of the progress of civilization. That turns me on.”
2007–2023 · changed view
“Well I think it's very useful to get the capitalist perspective, namely how do you make this thing work for the people that own it, because the reality will make more sense when you go at it with that perspective. So even if you don't intend to get rich, you want that perspective, because you'll understand the reality you're dealing with better. So I think you mentally want to make yourself an investor as part of the proper training of your mind. And since you have to do it anyway to improve your mind, you may as well get rich while you're doing it. And so if you underspend your income while you're life and keep learning and collect all the bonehead experience mistakes other people made and avoid them and so on, I would confidently predict that you'll do just fine.”